


Rebuilding

by Colubrina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Eating Disorders, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-23 18:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30059724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Hermione Granger returns to Hogwarts to help rebuild the shattered castle the summer after the war. She and the other summer resident - and eventually their friends - have to come to terms with how the war broke more than just the walls of the building. Follows multiple Hogwarts students through '8th year' and one additional year of early adulthood.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom/Theodore Nott
Comments: 32
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on FFN as a daily web serial between August of 2015 and May of 2016. The original structure was 300 very short chapters. I am attempting to consolidate to 30 longer chapters in the move to AO3.

When the war was over and the trials held, Hermione Granger went back to Hogwarts to help rebuild. She planned on going back to redo, if that was the right word, her seventh year and take her N.E.W.T exams and she wanted the building intact for that.

She also had nowhere else to go.

Her parents were well and truly obliviated and consultations with more experienced wizards and witches had all yield the same results. She’d done an excellent job – a most impressive job – but to try to undo it risked brain damage. Let them be, she was advised. They’re happy in the life you created for them. Let them live it. She’d listened to everyone who told her this, her face grimmer and her heart lower with each meeting, and finally had conceded that they were right. At least her parents were alive; not everyone could say that. At least they were happy. 

She couldn’t go to the Weasleys’ either, for all that their family had been her wizarding home for years. She hadn’t, after all, been able to forgive Ron. He loved her; she had no doubt of that. However, every time he held her hand or hugged or kissed her she was back in the tent in the woods with Harry, abandoned. Maybe it was petty. She’d been able to forgive so many people for so much more. She’d even shaken Narcissa Malfoy’s hand and wished her luck after her trial, meaning every word, but Ron she had cared about too much and his betrayal had cut too deeply. If she hadn’t loved him before that she would have been able to grow to love him afterward but, as it was, his love felt like ashes in her mouth. 

This meant, of course, that Molly Weasley wanted nothing to do with her.

Therefore, she packed her bags and went to Hogwarts. The Gryffindor dorms were in pieces and McGonagall, apologies in her eyes, had suggested the Slytherin dorms because they had been sheltered from the fighting. “There’s only one other student living there this summer,” McGonagall told her. “By September we’ll surely have the Tower ready for you again.”

Hermione had nodded. It was a bed and right then she couldn’t be too fussy about where she found one of those. She let herself in, rolling her Muggle-born eyes at the ‘pureblood’ password, and settled into one of the girl’s dorm rooms. She was used to the brilliant, sun-filled rooms of Gryffindor Tower and the eerie green glow that filtered in through the windows felt depressing and suffocating. No wonder all the Slytherins seemed so miserable all the time, she thought as she set a few novels out on the desk. They probably all suffered mood disorders because they didn’t get enough light. 

She knew that while quite a large number of people were commuting in every day to help rebuild, almost no one was living in the castle over the summer. Her, the staff, and whoever this other student was. “We’re still serving meals,” McGonagall had said. “The house-elves got angry when we suggested they didn’t need to cook so we’re all meeting in what was once a classroom. It’s in reasonably good shape which the Hall...”

There the woman had trailed off and Hermione had nodded; there was no point in dwelling on what condition the Hall was in. She was here to help fix it, after all. She’d taken the classroom number of the new dining space and said she would meet her fellow residents there for dinner. Casting a tempus charm, Hermione realized that was now and pushed open the door of her room to begin making her way back up and out of the dungeons.

She couldn’t even muster surprise when she saw the blond head in the Slytherin common room and realized who the other summer resident was. Nothing had gone right since the war had ended; why should this be any different?

#

Draco Malfoy hated his life. There were days he wished that bloody Potter hadn’t saved him from the fire, hadn’t testified at his trial, hadn’t saved the whole damned world. Those were the days he wished he were dead, or in Azkaban, or in whatever other hell might be dreamt up for a failed murderer and incompetent Death Eater. Being at home became unbearable; his parents were like an itch under his skin he couldn’t reach with their endless worry and concern and he wished they’d bugger off and leave him alone because he might want to be dead but he was too much of a coward to do anything about that wish so they could just go away.

When it was clear they were not, in fact, going to go away, he wrote to Acting Headmistress McGonagall and asked if she would let him come back and help rebuild Hogwarts. Her reply was formal and courteous and, though he was fairly sure he wasn’t actually welcome, she did say that, yes, they were accepting all offers of assistance. He was at the gates the next day.

She told him the Slytherin dorms were in the best condition and that he might as well get settled. Was he planning on redoing his seventh year, she asked, and he grasped onto the idea of a year away from his hovering mother and overly hearty father and said that, yes, he would very much like that opportunity.

She looked a tad sour and Draco smiled at that, anger and self-loathing hidden behind a mask more unfeeling than even the one he had worn as a Death Eater. McGonagall assigned him to the library and he spent two weeks silently picking books up from toppled shelves, checking for damage, and then putting them, still silent, into boxes. The cleaning could be done magically but books had to be cleared away first and each one needed to be hand checked. Madam Pince watched him through narrowed eyes for the first hour but decided, or so he assumed, that he could be trusted not to rip pages out and that he knew the difference between a book requiring repair and a book that merely needed to be reshelved. He was forbidden to enter the Restricted Section. He didn’t argue with her.

He sorted books in silence, ate meals with the staff in silence, returned to his room where he stared out into the depths of the lake in silence. It was a relief to be left alone. After two weeks, McGonagall pulled him aside and told him another student would be returning to the castle and joining him in the dorms and that she expected him to behave with courtesy and propriety. The threat of how if he didn’t he would be sent home was unvoiced but clear, and Draco gave her his politest smile and said he looked forward to the company.

McGonagall made a peculiar choking noise at that but all she said was that the library work would go faster with another pair of hands and Draco nodded. That night he pulled back his sleeve and ran his finger around and around the ugly Mark on his arm and across the fainter red lines that ran through it. He’d taken it willingly; that thought made him huff out a bitter laugh. He’d been so stupid. Every decision in his short life had been so, so stupid. He was stuck with it now, stuck in a silent life where he’d made too many mistakes.

He sorted books again the next day and then went back to his room to wash away the dust before dinner. He heard the new student come in and realized, based on which dorm she went to, that she had to be a girl. He supposed that explained McGonagall’s concern about proprieties. 

He waited in the common room to walk her, whoever she was, to dinner because his mother would have given him one of her disappointed looks if she ever found out he hadn’t offered that courtesy, even to some Hufflepuff half-blood do-gooder here to make everything shiny again. He’d disappointed his mother enough in his life and preferred to avoid adding any additional failures to his list and so he was standing in the room, idly staring out in the lake and thinking about how peaceful the water was when he heard the familiar voice behind him.

“Malfoy. Bloody hell,” said Hermione Granger.

All he could think was, “Fuck.”

#

Hermione wished McGonagall had warned her she’d be living with Draco Malfoy. It seemed unfair to discover this by just seeing his too familiar head, a head that turned sharply at her shocked vulgarity. He looked miserable for a moment and then his face went blank and she’d have thought she’d imagined the flash of despair in his eyes if she hadn’t spent a year living with a similar feeling curled up against her own heart.

“I waited to walk you to dinner,” he said, no tone at all in his voice. “The room they’ve selected can be a mite tricky to find; however, now that I see it’s you I realize that was unnecessary. I’m sure you can find it on your own; I won’t be offended if you would prefer to not stroll the halls with me, Granger.”

“Hermione.” She said her name automatically and, at his raised eyebrow, added, “I find being called Granger a bit grating these days and prefer not to be reminded of my family name. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to be called Hermione.” She realized how stiff and unpleasant she sounded as the words left her mouth; if there were a less friendly way to invite someone to use one’s given name she’d never heard it. 

Draco shrugged, his face still showing no emotion at all. “If that’s what you prefer.”

“It is,” she said and they stood there in uncomfortable silence. The truth was she’d much rather not walk to dinner with Draco Malfoy but there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid it now that he was standing there and they were both going to the same place. “Lead on, McDuff,” she said at last and gestured toward the door.

“It’s ‘lay on,’” he said. She’d taken a few steps in the direction of the exit and stopped to look at the boy who’d corrected her.

“It’s ‘lead on,’” she said.

He shook his head. “’Lay on,’” he repeated, “and it doesn’t mean ‘after you.’ It’s an invitation for McDuff to start attacking.”

“Oh.” Hermione considered Draco Malfoy at some length and then said, “Lead on, then, Malfoy. I’ve had enough attacking for one year, and I’d much rather just get dinner.”

He held the door open for her. “Enough attacking for a lifetime, I’d think,” he said and she saw his eyes flick to her covered forearm as she passed him but he didn’t say anything and she found herself grateful for the respite. Most wizards and witches could barely keep themselves from staring at that scar, from telling her how sorry they were, from telling her they weren’t prejudiced against Muggle-borns. Ron had wallowed in a guilt that had begun to seem excessive, as though somehow her scar was more about his failure to save her than her actual suffering. 

She shook her head as though she could physically toss him from her thoughts and waited for Draco Malfoy to shut the door to his – to  _ their _ – common room behind him and then let him lead the way to the makeshift dining room. It was a long walk and the silence began to feel as oppressive as the dreary green light in her dorm room so at last she asked, “When did you read  _ MacBeth _ ?”

“I had a governess,” he said. “Before I came to Hogwarts and over the summers until....” He paused for a moment and then started again. “All the classics and maths and rhetoric.”

He didn’t explain why he’d read a Muggle playwright and she didn’t pursue the matter further. He held a chair for her at the table and they sat in silence and ate the cottage pie, careful not to brush against one another and Hermione stared at the potatoes on her plate and wondered how she’d ended up living with Draco Malfoy and why that still seemed preferable to any of her other options. Her lips curled in a slight smile as she considered that she’d do best to not mention Malfoy’s presence to Harry when she wrote to him. Despite testifying on the Malfoy’s behalf before the Wizengamot, Harry would probably arrive at the gates ready to defend her honour and the last thing he needed was to be back at Hogwarts.

#

Draco held the door for bloody bedamned Granger as they returned to the common room and she murmured polite and empty thanks before disappearing down the corridor and into her room. He knew now why that cursed McGonagall had made that strangled sound when he’d said he would enjoy the company of another student. He wondered if the old tabby knew he’d stood and watched his aunt carve that slur onto Granger’s arm. He wondered if the girl hated him for being unable to so much as mouth a single objection to seeing her tortured in front of him. Weasley had screamed and begged to be taken in her place; Weasley had practically torn the door of his cell off its hinges trying to get to her. All he had done was stand there, pale and shaking, wanting to throw up. It was what he’d done after the lot of them had been rescued: gone to his room and lost the whole of the contents of his stomach. 

In her place, he’d be reconsidering spending a summer in this castle. In her place, he’d never want to lay eyes on Draco Malfoy again.

He stood in his room and splayed a hand out over the thick glass of the round window and watched a small fish flit by, the silver scales catching a glint from some late afternoon sunbeam and reflecting it at him. He smiled at the sudden sparkle and leaned his forehead against the glass. How did you apologize for seven years of torment? How did you admit you’d discovered you were wrong in a way that you’d never be free of? Some lessons are quite literally burned into you.

His fingers yearned to pick up the knife he had in his top drawer but he’d promised himself if he came to Hogwarts he’d stop. It wasn’t like he could cut the damn thing out anyway. 

He waited for her the next morning and they walked in silence to the dining room to grab some toast before making their way to the library together. “Where should we start?” she asked him.

“I’ve been working through the transfiguration books,” he said and she nodded. They worked without speaking, brushing the dust off the books, checking them for damage, and moving them into the boxes Madam Pince had arranged against the wall that had been labeled to make the eventual reshelving process easy. He watched her covertly and noted the way she pushed her curls out of her face with an impatient gesture and bit her lip when she wasn’t sure whether a book was damaged or merely old. She exuded an easy competence that he found restful. After an hour or so she said his last name and the sound seemed like a shock in the dusty room.

“What?” he asked her.

She held out a book. “I’m not sure how to categorize this one.” 

He took it from her. The stitching in the spine was coming unraveled and several pages seemed loose. The damage hadn’t been caused by the magical storm that had raced through the castle, toppling shelves and spilling volumes out onto the floor, but the book still needed attention. He sighed and glanced over at the piles of books to be repaired; they found them faster than Madam Pince could fix them.

“We’ll never get this done by September,” Granger said, following the line of his gaze and taking the book back. She sighed as she stood up and worked some kind of soreness out of her knee, swinging her lower leg back and forth before she crossed over to the box for Pince to address and set the advanced transfiguration book on top of the pile.

Draco looked around the library. Thousands upon thousands of books, each one needing to be individually evaluated. “Probably not,” he agreed. “It’s not my job to plan the work, though. I just sort the books.” He looked down at the volume in his hand and send it sailing across the room to the ‘transfiguration: r-t’ box. 

Hermione nodded. “If I cleaned them and you moved them to the right box we’d get more done,” she said. 

“Working together?” he asked, taken aback.

“It would be more efficient,” she said, not meeting his gaze.

He nodded, keeping his face blank. By lunch, they’d developed an easy system. She levitated each book and cleaned the dust off it and sent it to his side. He examined them for damage and sent them flying across the room to their appropriate boxes. By dinner, she’d come up with a trick to remove the bits of shattered stone and plaster from the books three and four at a time and the table he was standing at was stacked with immaculate books because he couldn’t keep up with her. When Madam Pince told them to stop and go get some food and rest he held his hands up in mock surrender. “You win,” he said to Granger. “I admit my defeat.”

Then he heard what he’d just said and added, vicious mockery in his voice, “But I guess everyone knows that.”

#

The tentative accord the two had reached after a day of laboring over the books together shattered when he’d dripped his bitter mockery onto her and she’d given him a shuttered glare before walking off to dinner, still covered in the musty plaster dust that permeated the library. She sat with that oaf Hagrid and asked him about what he was doing to repair the castle and he went into a long and, to Draco’s mind, tedious explanation of how magical beasts were stabled at Hogwarts and how he hoped to improve the facilities now that they had to start from nothing.

“Yeh could come down an’ feed the thestrals,” the man invited her. “I mean, now that yeh ken see ‘em and all.”

Draco sat, spooning pudding onto his plate, and saying nothing. He’d never liked Hagrid, a dislike he was honest enough to admit, if only to himself, that was based partially on class prejudice, but was also on what a dreadful teacher the man had been. He played favorites, and he hated all of Slytherin House out of some inner bias of his own, and his classes had been filled with monsters the man could barely control.

Good times.

Draco would have preferred to have gone his entire life without being able to see the thestrals and the reminder he’d seen people die was one he could have done without. He moved his plate to the sideboard for the elves to clear and walked back to his dorm alone. He had decided he wasn’t going to let perfect little Hermione Granger chase him into hiding in his own dorm and had almost defiantly settled himself on one of the sofas in the common room when she pushed open the door. 

He said, “Didn’t go down to feed the horsies?”

She shut the door with a quiet click and began to walk past him to her room.

“Why are you here?” he demanded of her back. It was the question that had nagged at him since she’d shown up. “This is work for people who have no place better to go,” he continued. “This is for the defeated, this is a way to make amends. This is for  _ me _ , not for you. Not for war heroes with Potter as their best friend and the whole, heroic Weasley clan to back them up.” She stopped walking and he could see the way she braced her shoulders and he lashed out again, resentful for reasons he didn’t even understand. “Aren’t you supposed to be planning your wedding to the youngest Weasley boy right about now? Some kind of triumphant thing to grace the papers? Heroes and heroines and romance and happy ever afters and - “

“You need to be quiet.”

It was the way she didn’t even raise her voice that stopped him and when she turned the way tears were leaving trenches in the dust on her cheeks didn’t bring him the satisfaction he’d have expected being able to make her cry would have.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she continued. “You  _ don’t know _ . And no, I didn’t want to go feed the ‘ _ horsies _ ’.” Her mouth twisted the last word into an epithet of fury and despair. “I wish I couldn’t see them; I don’t want to go look at them and be reminded of why I can.”

“Me either,” he said. It was as close to an apology as he could muster and she didn’t look impressed but she didn’t leave so he asked again, “Why are you here?”

“Why are you here?” she countered.

“I couldn’t bear it at home,” he said. The words were bald and more honest than he’d expected to be.

“Better dusty books and silence than – “

“Than Malfoy Manor,” he said though the words were both truth and lies. He missed the Manor of his childhood with an ache that never went away. He missed the duck pond and evading his governess and flying over the lawns and the way his mum had pushed back his hair with an exasperated smile and clucked over the way he’s always managed to get grass stains on his knees right before party guests had arrived. He hated the Manor where he’d watched people suffer and die, where he’d been trapped in a nightmare, where he’d learned things that made Latin declensions seem fun. He’d yet to reconcile that they were the same house. He turned away from her and muttered, “What’s so bad in your life that being here is better?”

“I wanted solitude,” she said.

“And got me.”

She shrugged. “Nothing’s perfect.” 

#

Draco Malfoy had already left when Hermione got up the next morning, a discovery she made only after she waited for him so long in their common room she missed breakfast. Casting an aggrieved eye at the hall that led to the Slytherin boys’ rooms, she stalked off to the library muttering about people who slept in and made her miss meals only to find the rotter sitting at the table they’d left stacked with books the day before, quietly sending books to their boxes.

Hunger made her grouchy and she dropped her bag by his chair with a loud thump. “Good morning, Malfoy,” she said. “No rest for the wicked, I see.”

He looked up at her and she was struck by how his face, always angular, seemed sharp and wan the way it had sixth year. He’d always been thin with the sleight frame that suited Seekers, but now he seemed like he could be broken by a hard slap. He’d pushed his sleeves up and his Mark – weirdly irritated - stood out again the fair skin. She wondered if he was trying to rub her nose in his past or if he just didn’t think about it. Even looking almost ill, he exuded an aristocratic confidence that made her feel like a gauche child. She remembered his casual admission he’d had a private governess and found herself more resentful of his class and his privilege than she ever had been before even as a thread of worry about how frail he was crept into her. He shouldn’t have skipped breakfast. He couldn’t afford to not eat.

“I thought I’d try to catch up,” he said. “You got ahead of me yesterday.”

“Peasants are good for that,” she said, pushing concern away in favor of the far more comfortable dislike. “Hard-workers and all.”

“You said it, not me,” he said and turned back to examining a book on transfiguring other people against their will.

“Bring back memories?” she asked.

“You mean of being a ferret,” he asked and she felt a twinge of guilt as he levitated the book away to the ‘transfiguration: authors j-k’ box. “Yes, I like to dwell on the day a madman turned me into an animal and smashed all my bones by hurling me against the ground over and over again.” She watched him pull another book off the pile and begin to examine it. He looked up and must have seen the way she gaped at him before she controlled her expression. “Or did you not realize that ferrets feel pain?”

Hermione could feel the blood drain from her face as she stared at him, frozen in place by the nearly placid question.

“I do understand I’m the villain of this piece,” Malfoy said, “but maybe you could go back to being an efficient peasant and clean off the books for me?”

She whirled around and, feeling her stomach growl its protest at the missed breakfast, began to clean the books. She cleaned the books  _ at him _ , stripping the debris from them, sailing them to the table, and dropping them onto the piles with a little too much vigor to be efficient. She worked, simmering in an unpleasant mix of resentment and relief that he didn’t want to talk. She worked and considered their years of mutual antagonism and the way she’d once called him a ‘twitchy little ferret’ and he’d spun in fear and she’d laughed at him.

He’d been a bully and a horror and he’d deserved it.

She still flinched when she saw women with bushy black hair. She still shuddered away from women in black dresses.

She finally turned and said, her face screwed up like a child about to take a potion, “I’m sorry.”

Malfoy set the book he’d been examining down with exaggerated care and looked at her. “I beg your pardon?” 

“It hadn’t occurred to me that you’d suffered when you were… the ferret thing,” she muttered. “It was just funny. I shouldn’t have brought it up and I wouldn’t have if I’d realized... I apologize.”

“That’s quite all right,” he said, the practiced graciousness far more irritating than retaliation would have been. “Think nothing of it.”

She looked at the way he was bent over the table and sighed. “Would you walk me to lunch?” she asked. Malfoy looked at her and she saw, again, surprise and despair before his face went blank and he nodded and pushed his chair back. What is going on inside your pretty head, she wondered and didn’t even realize she’d complimented him in the privacy of her own mind. 

#

Draco held the door to the library open for his co-worker and watched her walk past him. The hair he’d mocked for years was held back in a pair of braids that made an effort to contain her curls while making her look rather hilariously like a child. Whatever Hermione Granger’s failings were, excessive feminine vanity wasn’t one of them. Nor, he thought to himself, cowardice. He’d known she was absurdly brave about big things. The war had made that clear. Now he’d seen her be brave about small things as well. 

He hadn’t expected her to apologize. 

Damn her for being the bigger person.

He could feel his jaw clench as he forced himself to make conversation while they walked. He was not going to let her be humble and gracious and pleasant and then scowl at her side like a child. “What’s your favorite play?” he asked.

She stopped walking and gave him an incredulous look.

“Shakespeare,” he said as if she were slow. He was already regretting his decision to try to converse with her, manners be damned. “What’s your favorite play?”

She started walking again and then said, “I haven’t read them all.”

“No one’s read Timon of Athens,” Draco said.

That tricked a laugh out of her. “Or Corialanus,” she agreed. She bent her head down and he wondered if she was just not going to answer she waited so long but at least she said, “I know the obvious answer would be Hamlet or Midsummer but I always loved Much Ado. It’s trivial and fun and you certainly know from the moment they start arguing they’ll end up together but –“

“But seeing them get there is the fun,” Draco said. “You would like a romance.” He held the door to the dining room open for her and she murmured the generic thanks she always did and he spared a moment to consider that they both, at some point, had had automatic courtesy so drilled into them that they didn’t even think about it. “How have you read so many plays,” he asked as he held her chair. “Is that normal for Muggles?”

“How have you?” she asked.

“Governess,” he said again. “Miss Bishop felt that only the Bard mattered.”

“That seems surprising,” Hermione said.

Draco gave her a sudden, conspiratorial grin. “Give me a moment,” he said, and went over to the sideboard and prepared them both plates with sandwiches and crisps. After he slid back into place next to her, he began to explain. “I was a bit of a spoiled child,” he began. She made a rude snort and he ducked his head before continuing. “I tended to try to the patience of the staff and I believe the woman before Miss Bishop said that no amount of money was worth trying to contain ‘that horrid monster.’”

“My sympathy lies with the governess.” 

“I’m shocked,” Draco said. “Miss Bishop was the only person who applied for the position after that. Apparently word had gotten out and my parents hired her for one summer holiday before they realized she was Muggle-born.”

Hermione’s sandwich had been halfway to her mouth when he said that. He watched her lower it and turn in her seat. “So she taught you Muggle classics,” she said. “Did your parents ever find out?”

“They fired her,” Draco said. He didn’t mention that after the woman had left he’d been told to forget all the nonsense she’d polluted his head with, or that his mother had hired a professional cleaning service to scour every room the woman had been in. He’d salvaged a few books, mostly out of spite at how his favorite governess was just gone one day, and re-read them when he’d been locking himself in his room to avoid the Death Eaters in residence. The irony of that had not escaped him. In retrospect, he wondered what desperation had made the woman take a job with people sure to despise her if her background came out. He assumed she was long dead.

“Naturally,” Hermione said and returned to her sandwich. After she took a few bites she said, “Most Muggles our age wouldn’t have read as many as I have. I just… I didn’t have a lot of friends as a child and I was somewhat precocious. When I went home over summer holidays I mostly read.”

Draco nodded. He remembered what she had been like their first year; it had set the tone for his dislike of her. She’d been clever and desperate to prove it. He suspected that even the teachers had found her grating; he’d wanted to shove her into the dirt almost every time he’d been around her. When she’d finally found friends she’d been almost fanatically loyal to them which meant she’d set herself even more firmly against him than just their natural house loyalties and his prejudice would have guaranteed. Enemies from the very beginning. 

“What was your favorite?”

“Play?” Draco asked her, just to be sure. When she nodded he shrugged. “Titus.”

She gave him a horrified look so he elaborated. “It gave me a context. War generates atrocity. What I was… it wasn’t unique. It was  _ human _ .” He lowered his head and said so quietly he doubted she heard him. “I was human.”

#

When Draco Malfoy said ‘Titus’ Hermione felt horror creep down her spine. Titus Andronicus was not a play with which anyone should identify. She choked down the rest of her sandwich and heard the whispered, ‘I was human,’ and wanted to go to her room and cry. Instead, she licked her lips and ate her crisps and took his plate to clear away when lunch was done. 

“I think I should have the rest of the transfiguration books cleaned by dinner,” she said as he held the door. “Then I can help you sort and we’ll have the whole section done.”

“Arithmancy next?” he asked as they walked through the deserted halls. Even in the few days she’d been here she could see progress being made. The library work was slow and labor-intensive compared to the way magic could rebuild walls and shore up shattered towers. She and Malfoy were tucked away doing the detail work no one else wanted while the showy tasks got handed out Ministry work crews with  _ Daily Prophet _ reporters embedded in their midst. She pointed out a window now and Malfoy stopped to watch a photographer document a group of well-dressed wizards as they lay a cornerstone for the new Quidditch pitch. 

“Priorities,” she said.

“You want to be photographed?” he asked her.

“No,” she said with a shudder. The last thing she wanted was to be back in the papers. She hadn’t even arranged to have a subscription forwarded to her here. She just didn’t want to know anymore. “You?”

“If they took my picture it would be to accompany an article on how McGonagall’s mad for trusting me to help with the rebuilding,” Malfoy said. “I would prefer to avoid that.” He stepped away from the window. “Arithmancy section next?” he asked again.

“Gentleman’s choice.” 

“I’m afraid you don’t have one of those to hand.” He started to walk away and she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He flinched at the touch but she didn’t pull her hand back.

“Malfoy,” she said, frustrated because she wasn’t sure how to say this without sounding like a sap. “Whatever else you’ve been and are, you’re certainly not… you’re….” She sighed and gave up and rubbed her face with her hands. “Arithmancy’s fine,” she muttered.

“Were you trying to say something nice about me,” he asked and she let out an exasperated huff and started to walk to the library. Malfoy followed, transformed by amusement into the far more familiar prat. “You couldn’t find one nice thing to say? Let me show you how it’s done.” He stopped walking and cleared his throat and she turned to watch him. “You do not look quite as bad in those braids as most girls would,” he said in a tone of utter and complete seriousness only partially belied by the smirk on his face and the dramatic placement of his hand over his heart.

She opened her mouth to tell him off and then her eyes crinkled into a smirk of pure mischief that matched his. “You are somewhat less unpleasantly arrogant than you were at fifteen,” she said.

Draco Malfoy began to walk again. “You,” he said, “ Are not as ignorant of literature as I would have supposed.”

“Upon due reflection, I do not find the pale colour of your eyes and skin wholly repulsive,” Hermione retorted.

“You are at least half as clever as you think you are,” he said.

“Three-quarters,” she said.

“What?” Draco asked her.

“I am at least three-quarters as clever as I think I am,” she explained.

Draco began to laugh. “You are somewhat more useful at book sorting than the average girl,” he offered.

“Your manners are not as bad as the average boy’s,” she said, trying to hold back the giggles that were threatening to spill out of her throat.

“Well,” he said, “You were dating Weasley. Your standards might not be that high.”

She felt as if he’d kicked her and all traces of amusement sank away. He must have sensed the change because he stopped walking and looked at her. “Shite,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said as she held open the door to the library. “Think nothing of it. Arithmancy’s fine for our next section; I’ll just get the rest of the transfiguration books cleaned up and then start helping you sort.”

#

He’d promised himself –  _ promised _ himself – that he’d stop but he barricaded himself in his room that night after a silent afternoon of working and a silent dinner and a polite thank you as he held the door into the common room and sat on his bed and stared at his desk.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Malfoy,” he muttered. “Worthless, worthless, worthless.”

He’d sat in the library and sorted books and felt the lack of even the minor social interaction with the witch as if it were a gaping hole. She’d said she was sorry – actually sorry – about the ferret incident and he’d known she meant more than she was sorry she’d brought it up. She was sorry it had happened. She was sorry she’d laughed. She was sorry she hadn’t understood. She was sorry sorry sorry and no one else had ever been, and he repaid that by twisting the knife about Weasley.

Why the fuck wasn’t she  _ with _ Weasley, anyway? Why was she here, sorting books and living in a House he knew she despised? He didn’t believe for a moment she wanted solitude. Something had happened and she’d fled to the emotional safety of Hogwarts the same way he had. He buried his head in his hands and tried to do the breathing trick he’d read about. Breathe in calm thoughts. Breathe out the way it had felt to sit in his house terrified he’d die. Breathe in peace. Breathe out watching that monster’s snake eat a teacher. Breathe in ease. Breathe out watching Hermione Granger get tortured. Breathe out the sound of her screaming. Breathe out the way his aunt had laughed in delight.

He wrenched open the drawer and stared at the contents. Just once, he thought. Just to calm down. Just to make the memories go away.

He let go of the handle and muttered, “You promised, you said no more,” and he backed away to the door of his room. He crossed the common room to the corridor that led to her room and stood there. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words echoing down the hall. “I’m an arse and I’m sorry.”

He could hear the latch to her door click open and then she was standing there, lit only from the side by the light from her room, the braids undone and her hair bushier than he’d ever seen it and she was wearing pajamas and staring back at him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and turned to go.

“I couldn’t forgive him,” she said. The words were abrupt and Draco suspected she hadn’t meant to say them. He froze and listened to her walk up behind him. “He left us that year, Ron did, left Harry and me alone, and I’d loved him, and it felt like a betrayal on so many levels, and I couldn’t… it was over. I couldn’t trust him again. Not really.”

“So you moved in with me,” he said, the mockery back in his voice. “Because I’m such a good guy.”

“Well,” she said, “that wasn’t my goal. You were sort of unexpected.”

“I could go,” he said, hating the idea but holding it out to her anyway. “My parents would be glad to have me back.”

“Do you have nightmares in that house?” she asked. He didn’t answer and she said, “I would in your place.”

“I have nightmares here too,” he said, keeping his voice as light as he could. “I’m not sure the location matters that much. I did terrible things here too.”

“You tried to survive.” His back was still to her and he wasn’t sure he could bear the note of understanding and he took a step forward, deeper into the dark of the common room and further from her voice. 

“I think,” he said, “there are things one shouldn’t do even to survive. Something I have realized only in retrospect.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Draco closed his eyes and shuddered. He could hear her moving behind him and then there was the touch of her hand on his shoulder again. “You’ll hate me,” he said. “You would hate me.”

“Well,” she said, “we aren’t exactly friends now so it’s not like you’ll lose a relationship that matters to you, and maybe talking would help.”

“How did we move from my apologizing to you for being an arse to you offering to listen to me prattle on about the assorted miseries of my life?” he asked.

“Conversations,” she said. “They meander. And I’ve been best friends with two boys since I was eleven and spent a year living with them in a tent. I’m reasonably good at knowing when male-type people are upset.”

“Male type people?” Draco asked.

“Let’s see if the elves can be convinced to send over some hot chocolate,” she suggested. “I’ll tell you about camping and you tell me about…not camping.”

#

They sat on opposite ends of the same couch and didn’t touch and didn’t make eye contact and drank the chocolate the elves had been willing to bring him but not her and he talked. He talked about being afraid and about being desperate. He talked about hope held out in a form he couldn’t trust that was too little much too late. He talked about witnessing the kind of horrors only a madman with power could orchestrate and about hiding in his room. He told her how he’d thrown up after she’d been at the Manor. He told her he’d been so lost he hadn’t known what to do. He told her how it had begun to feel like a mountain looming over him and there was no way to climb it and no way to make it go away and how he’d begun just pretending it wasn’t there. 

“Your friends?” she asked and he looked up at how wretched she sounded and saw her watching him as though something had broken inside her while he talked and he hated himself for that too. As if she hadn’t borne enough, now he was trying to make her carry his ordeals too. He’d brought them on himself; he needed to be the one to suffer them.

“Which friends would those be?” he asked her. “Vince and Greg were all in. Pansy terrified and keeping her distance. Blaise determinedly neutral.”

“The other one?” she asked, unable to remember his name. “The skinny one?”

“Theo?” Draco asked and then shook his head. “He has problems of his own; he doesn’t need mine.”

“Did you ever ask?” She was leaning toward him as though she could somehow use proximity to convince him she was right and he turned and looked at the black windows that peered into the lake. They’d only lit one lantern and neither had cast a lumos and the room was nearly dark and the flickering light gave an illusion of intimacy. He’d probably told the witch more than he should have thanks to that light.

“No,” he said. “I never asked.” He turned back to her. “You have problems of your own too.”

She shrugged. “I’m alive and in one piece and that monster is dead. After that, everything else is details.” She stood up. “C’mon.”

“What?” He stared at her. Barefoot, rumpled, her hair something that would give an arachnid nightmares, she was holding the lantern and looking disreputable and unpredictable. 

“This place is too dark and I miss the sky,” she said. “Let’s go look at the stars.” He gaped at her and she laughed. “Too naughty for your tastes? There’s no curfew, you know. And I hardly think I’m at risk for you taking advantage. Between the Gryffindor thing and the Mudblood thing, I’m not exactly your type.”

He stood up, wariness competing with the urge to be leave everything behind for one beautiful night and go outdoors at midnight with no shoes and no fear. He nodded and held the door for her. “You shouldn’t call yourself that,” he said as they picked their way over the cold stone floors, up a set of stairs, and to the nearest exit. 

“A Gryffindor?” she said and ducked her head to get through the low door. “But it’s what I am.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he said and looked at her after straightening up himself to realize she was grinning at him. 

“You’re….” He trailed off and looked at the woman standing there on the scruffy grass outside the partially ruined castle with a lantern in her hand as if he’d never seen her. She still had pajamas on, of all things, and the light from the flame was reflected in her eyes with a gold glint and she was absurd and beautiful and laughing at him.

“I have a sense of humor?” she asked. “I’m not just the rule-abiding swot you assumed I was? Let’s go, Malfoy. The viewing’s better from over there. The castle gets in the way here.”

He followed her, stunned and obedient, and heard himself saying, “Draco.”

“What?” She stopped and turned to look at him, the lantern illuminating her face.

“My name is Draco. And you’ll have to turn that out or you’ll be night blind from looking into the flame.”

“I know,” she said. 

“I should hope so,” he replied. “We only went to school together for six years. I know I can be a little forgettable, but after all that time I’d like to think –.“ She reached over and hit him on the arm. He rubbed at the spot and smirked at her. 

“I meant about the lantern,” she said. He watched her make a face, settle to the ground, turn the light off, and then mutter, “Draco.”

He sat down, stretched his legs out, leaned back on his hands, and looked up at the clear sky. It was a new moon and he could see the smear of white across the sky that was the Milky Way. “I love stargazing,” he said. 

“Me too,” she said and the grass rustled a bit as she shifted to get more comfortable.

“What makes you think you’re not my type?” he asked. “Hermione.”


	2. Theo Arrives

“Oh, I can think of a few reasons I might not be your type,” Hermione said. “There’s my embarrassing Muggle birth, our long-standing, mutual dislike, our school House rivalry, that we were on different sides of an actual war, you hate my friends, my friends hate you. We can barely manage a single, civil conversation without aggravating one another. I could go on.”

Draco lay on his back with his hands folded behind his head and thought of the reason she didn’t name: she didn’t say anything about his aunt or her suffering in his home.

“I can see why I might not be  _ your _ type,” he said.

“Oh, yes.” Her drawl was amused. “Rich, attractive, popular boys are definitely not my type at all. No one likes those.”

“I was thinking more about the Death Eater thing,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “And if you think I’m popular you might want to reassess that. Again. Death Eater.”

“I can see where that might lose a man some friends,” Hermione said, “But I don’t think you are one. Were one.”

Draco almost goggled at her in the darkness. “Did the war do something to your brain?” he asked after a long pause. “You’ve seemed to be fine but I know trauma can do some weird things to people. I assure you, I’m a Death Eater. Was a Death Eater. Held my arm out. Got Marked. It was not pleasant so the memory is hard to forget, much as I might like to.”

She sounded impatient. “Draco, if someone had held me down in your house and burned that thing into my arm would it have made me a Death Eater?”

“I held my arm out. I wasn’t forced,” he said, desperate to make her understand.

“There are ways of being forced to do something far more insidious than violence,” she said softly. “You were young. Your father was in prison. Your family honor, this thing you’d held as so important your whole life, was at risk.” He felt her fingers brush against his and then hold on. “You’ve been an arsehole and a shite for most of the time I’ve known you,” she said, “But you weren’t a Death Eater. Not really. Not like the Carrows were. Not like your aunt was.”

Draco Malfoy began to get the feeling that arguing with her was not going to get him anywhere and the idea that maybe one person didn’t hate him just for the Mark on his arm, didn’t think he was really a Death Eater, was seductive enough that he decided to hold onto it. “Still not popular,” he said.

“Eh,” she said. “Popularity’s overrated. I’ve never had a lot of friends. People find me grating and pushy.”

That was so honest Draco laughed and turned onto his side to look at her instead of the sky, not letting go of her hand. She was on her back but her face was turned to him and with his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could almost make out a look of pleased trouble on her face and he wondered again who was this woman who’d drained his fear by listening to him, who’d dragged him outside, and who somehow managed to turn ‘you’re an arsehole’ and ‘I’m grating’ into flirtation.

He began to understand why an international sports star had taken her to a dance their fourth year.

“Wait,” he said. “Did you call me attractive in this conversation?”

“Also a shite,” she said.

“But an  _ attractive _ shite,” he said.

“Well,” she said. “I’m not blind. And I have been working with you all day, every day. And eating meals with you. You are not unpleasant to look at.”

He reached his hand over and brushed his fingers across her face in the dark. “Your gushing praise is going to give me an inflated ego,” he said. “Hermione Granger.”

When his fingers brushed over her lips she inhaled sharply and pulled away from him. “I think we should go back,” she said. “We’ll be too tired to work tomorrow.”

“Right,” he said. She relit the lantern and he stood up, not making eye contact now that the safety of the darkness had been stripped away. “Thank you,” he said. “For listening and for bringing me out here. It’s been a long time since I looked at the stars. It helped.”

She laced the fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding the lantern through his and said, “Friends?”

He looked at the woman standing next to him with that hair and that flame glittering in her eyes again and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. She looked like he’d slapped her until he reached over and ran his thumb over her mouth again. 

**#**

Draco shut his desk drawer without looking into it and lay in the darkness of his room and closed his eyes. He still had grass stuck to the soles of his feet, and probably to the back of his trousers, and dirt in his hair, and he was going to need coffee in the morning to survive a day of sorting books. He ran a hand over his Mark and swallowed and whispered, “Not one, not really. Not like the Carrows,” before he fell asleep with the feel of her mouth lingering on his fingertips.

Despite the late night he still beat the witch to the common room and lounged as nonchalantly as he could manage against one of the support pillars. He’d taken as quick a shower as possible and watched the dirt and grass slip away and pulled on black trousers and a simple black shirt and knew –  _ knew _ – he looked rumpled and appealing and she’d already conceded he was attractive. That made the way she’d barely glanced at him more jarring than he’d expected. “Morning,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” was his only response. She was out the door before he could hold it and he found himself trailing after her through the dungeon corridors and up staircase after staircase as she plodded toward breakfast and stimulants without looking back at him. By the time they’d gotten food and caffeine and settled in front of the Arithmancy section in the library, he realized she didn’t plan to say anything about their conversation or his tentative advances.

That wounded his pride. He was a Death Eater but he was also a  _ Malfoy _ . He was… girls tried to get his attention, he didn’t try to get theirs. And she was a –

He cut off that line of thinking. 

“I’m not going to apologize,” he said at last as they began to assess the tumbled shelves. 

“I think we should set this upright before we start,” Hermione said, touching the bookcase. “It’ll be easier to get to the books once it’s out of the way.”

“You don’t even intend to acknowledge what I said?” Draco demanded.

“Fine,” she said, her hand still on the shelf. “You don’t plan to apologize. Can you help me with this or should I do it alone?”

Draco pulled out his wand, his very new wand that still felt alien in his hand, and helped her shift the large and heavy case up and back onto its moorings. She directed books out of the way of its base and they twined their magic together to get the old and heavy wood stabilized and upright. When they were done she said, “Should we treat this the same way we did transfiguration? I’ll clean them and you sort them?”

He tucked his wand back away and reached to her hand and brushed his fingers across the back of her knuckles. She twitched her hand out of his reach. “Am I really that repugnant?” he asked her.

She sighed and rubbed her hand over her eyes. “You called me names for years, Draco. The worst names you knew. And I – “

“I don’t think that way anymore,” he protested.

“I’d believe you think you don’t,” she said. “I’d even believe you don’t want to. But you do.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I’m working in the library with you. We’re civil – mostly civil – and if I was what you say that wouldn’t be – “

“I didn’t say you were the same rude shite you were at thirteen,” Hermione cut him off. “I don’t think, after the war, you’re going to start yelling slurs at me.” She sagged a little. “Draco, your father never called me names in public either, and neither did most people who still thought... Your bias… it isn’t about being rude. It’s about… you really think I’m less because I’m not from a wizarding family. And I’ve spent so many years fighting that and I’m tired and I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to be left alone and not have to fight.”

“I don’t think you’re less.” Draco took her hand again and didn’t let it go. “Would we be having this conversation if I thought that?”

“Yes,” she said. “Sit and sort with me.”

She pulled her hand away and lowered herself to the library floor and began to make piles of books that had been damaged when their own shelf had crushed them. Draco hesitated a moment and then joined her. She handed him books and he flew them to boxes and neither said anything for a long while until, at last, Draco said, “I don’t understand.”

She set the book in his hand down and reached out to him and he clasped his fingers around hers. “Isn’t this sweet?” she asked. “The Mudblood and the pureblood holding hands. And you aren’t pulling away and you aren’t wiping your fingers on your trousers and everything’s all lovely until your friends come back. Until the rest of your House comes back. Until your parents find out. Then what? What do you tell your friend Theo? Is he going to be thrilled, or even  _ indifferent _ to the idea of you dating beneath you?”

“You aren’t – “

“Do you start to feel ashamed or defensive? Do you tell him I’m your little walk on the wild side? Or a pity date? Or maybe that you’re trying to get in good with the Order?”

Draco felt a lump in his throat as she continued with relentless, merciless thoroughness.

“Are you ready to defend holding my hand all day, every day, to everyone you know? Because you’d have to.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he whispered.

“It would be  _ exactly _ like that,” she said.

**#**

Draco picked up an Arithmancy book with a broken spine and moved it to the overflowing repair box by Madam Pince’s desk. Hermione handed him another, one she’d cleaned already, and he floated it away as well. Pince had already moved the transfiguration book boxes back to some storage room to wait for the library to be completed and the wall had been neatly laid out with boxes for the Arithmancy section. The librarian had, it would seem, kept note of what area they had decided to work on next.

“It was, in some ways, the same with Ron,” Hermione said after a long silence and Draco sucked in a breath; despite offering to talk about her camping adventure the night before they had not, and, other than her inability to forgive Weasley after some unspecified abandonment during the war, Draco was still unclear on how or why that relationship had fallen apart. “His family… they liked me well enough, I guess, but I was exotic. I was something different. I was never really one of them, not like Harry was. His father… he has some kind of obsession with Muggle trinkets like he’s collecting the art of primitives or something. He’d hold up a broken light bulb and talk about how  _ clever _ Muggles were, being able to get by without magic because of their – “

“Cleverness.” Draco said the word softly as he watched her. “As if you were a monkey who’d figured out how to use a sharp rock as a tool. Not nearly as good as what real people have, but still so very clever.”

“For a monkey,” she agreed. “Exactly. They have some uncle or great uncle or something who was a squib that they never talk about. Never. It’s disgraceful, you know, to have family who isn’t magical.”

“I know,” Draco said, looking away at last. Most squib children were never mentioned. He spared a thought that even the blood traitor Weasleys had avoided their non-magical kin as shameful. So much for their self-righteous perfection.

“And they aren’t even blood purists,” Hermione continued. “Not like – “

“Not like my family,” Draco said. “Not like my friends.” He lowered his head, defeated. She was right; dating her would be an endless series of explanations. He’d have to defend her to everyone he knew, assuming any of them would speak to him, and even people too polite to say anything would stare or, worse, make a point of not staring. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have presumed I was worth… I’ll go sort the clean ones once you move them to the table and try to stay out of your way.” He pulled himself up and walked to the table, each step like a knife as he waited for her to tell him to stay and she didn’t.

It was a silent and efficient and dreary morning and by lunch, his table was piled with immaculate books and the work partner he’d been sneaking covert glances at was covered in the dust and plaster and stone bits she’d been removing from the books.

“I’ve grown to hate the shattered busts of great wizards of old,” she said as she came and perched on the edge of the table. “Not one of them survived Voldemort; I think they all flung themselves off their pedestals in some kind of protest or something and now bits of them are all in my hair.” She plucked out a thumb-sized bit of stone from her curls. “Why, Adalbert Waffling, why?”

“Where was that?” Draco asked.

“In a book on magical theory, of course,” she said. “I think it had been miss-shelved because it shouldn’t have been in that section. Let’s take a break and get lunch.”

“I think I’ll work through,” he said. “You’re ahead of me again.”

He didn’t look up at her, just pulled another book off the pile and flipped through the pages. He flinched when she put a hand over his and pushed the book down to the table. “You’re too thin,” she said. “You need to eat.”

“Am I your project now?” he asked.

“No,” she said, standing up and yanking on his hand until he stood as well. “My friend.”

Draco had some thoughts about halves of loaves as they walked to the dining room.

#

“Tell me a secret,” Draco said. The afternoon had been less uncomfortable than the morning and by dinner, they’d eased into another quiet rapport. After their rambles the night before, and the emotional strain of the aftermath, both had flopped onto the couches in the Slytherin common room too tired to even do so much as read. Hermione let her head loll back against the leather couch and poked at it.

“I hate your common room,” she offered. “It’s dark and the furniture’s too nice.”

Draco picked his head up to look at her. “Too nice?” he asked. “Are you peasants all sitting on ratty overstuffed couches with fraying upholstery up in your tower or something?”

Hermione nudged him with her foot. “Snot,” she said.

“So that’s a yes,” he said and lowered his head back down and stared up at the ceiling. “My gratitude that I was Sorted the way I was remains intact. Worn out furniture. In magic school. Wonders have actually ceased.”

“It’s cozy that way,” she muttered. “This dark, gloomy, literal dungeon you live in is not cozy.”

“It’s restful,” he said. “It’s soothing. And I am not a snot.”

Hermione didn’t even bother to respond to that. Instead, she said, “You tell me one.”

Draco sat for a long time and considered what to say. She’d revealed very little and that seemed to set the tone and after last night’s confessional that was probably wise. He just didn’t think he had any trivial secrets. That he didn’t care for Turkish Delight seemed ridiculous. That he had a knife in his top drawer seemed like too much. He settled on, “I miss my parents.”

“Then why are you here?” Hermione asked.

He sighed. “They… ever since the war it’s like they have to reassure themselves I’m okay and they need me to tell them I’m okay and – “

“And you’re not okay,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said.

She nudged him with her foot again and he shifted so he could look at her. She had her cheek on the arm of the green leather couch and for all her complaining that she didn’t like the common room she looked comfortable. She’d showered the dust away and changed into a long cotton dress that had hitched up around her legs and revealed more thigh than she probably realized and she was watching him with those same dark eyes that he’d fallen into the night before. Summer seemed to stretch out before him as endlessly, unbearably long and he wondered how he was supposed to live with those eyes that saw everything and be the friend she’d walk away from as soon as her Gryffindor mates returned. “I’m not fine,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter. I miss them and I love them and I couldn’t stand to be home so I’m here.”

“I miss my parents too.” She said it so softly he almost didn’t hear the words and probably wouldn’t have realized she’d spoken if he hadn’t seen her lips move. He did the survival trick of replaying the last five seconds in his head.

“Where are they?” he asked once he was sure what she’d said.

“Australia,” she said and then, inexplicably, started to cry. “They’re in Australia and they’re fine and I’m here.”

He got up and slid across the floor to her and, almost afraid, reached up to put a hand on her shoulder. She shuddered and he used the other hand to wipe some of the water off her face and said, the words almost question, “So go visit them.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “They don’t know who I am.”

And then she told him and, by the time she was done explaining how she’d obliviated her parents and sent them away to protect them from people like his, she’d slid to the floor and he had his arms wrapped around her and she had her face buried in his shoulder as she cried and cried. “You’re so brave,” he murmured against her hair. “So goddamned brave. Is there anything left you didn’t sacrifice?”

“Harry,” she said through hiccups.

“Well, Potter’s into self-sacrifice,” Draco said. “Doesn’t need you to do it for him. Just wait long enough and he’ll probably find some way to manage it again.”

She laughed through the hiccups at that, the horrible choking sound of someone who can’t stop crying even though they’ve started to giggle too and she got out, “You’re awful,” but it sounded a lot like ‘Don’t let go’ so he didn’t.

**#**

Hermione rested her cheek against the absurdly soft t-shirt Draco Malfoy was wearing and contemplated both that he clearly paid more for very casual clothing than she had for her last formal dress and that she had been soaking that oh-so-expensive cotton shirt with tears and snot and rather than make sounds about her filth he was just running a hand over her hair and making soothing noises.

When at last she stopped hiccupping, she pulled away from him and muttered thanks through sniffles. He handed her a transfigured handkerchief and discreetly scrougified his shirt while she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. When she tried to hand the square of white cotton back to him he shook his head and said with a grimace that was almost--but not quite--gallant, “That’s fine. You can keep it.”

She stood up and brushed her clothing off trying to cover her embarrassment that she’d wept all over him. Life with Draco Malfoy appeared to be one emotionally fraught scene after another. She was trying to figure out how to make a graceful exit to her room when he stood as well, lowered all the lights to nothing with a wave of his wand, and took her by the hand in the suddenly dark room.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I want to show you something,” he said, and he led her over to one of the deep window seats that looked out into the dark lake. Hermione had eyed the windows when she’d first moved in with disdain. What was the point, she’d wondered, of having a view of nothing? Now this unexpected roommate nudged her until she sat on the immaculate cushion – probably silk, she thought, running her hand over the nubby fabric and hiding the urge to roll her eyes at the ostentatious nature of it – and he directed her attention out into the dark lake.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” she asked.

“Wait,” he said. “It stays light late enough now that you should see – there!”

He pointed at a sudden flash of silver and she blinked as the dull light that did reach into the lake, filtered through so much sediment the water seemed as dark green as everything else in the Slytherin dungeon, hit the scales of a fish. Then it hit another one, and another, and a school of small fish darted by and she gasped in delight at the sudden rain of sparkling dots from the reflections.

“They hide away when the lights are on,” Draco said in a hushed voice. “But when it’s dark they come out. Fish always. The mermaids, sometimes. Everyone once in a while, the giant squid.”

Hermione could hear her breath catch again as a larger fish passed by their window with a lazy twitch of its fins. 

“C’mere.” Draco had leaned his back up against the wall framing the seat and, now that her eyes had adjusted to just the light that came in through these windows, she could see he had one leg dangling down to the floor. He pointed, rather peremptorily she thought, at the space between his spread legs. “Honestly,” he said when she didn’t move, “I don’t bite.”

She regarded him. Weeping all over Draco Malfoy in a fit of grief seemed, somehow, different than settling back against his chest to sit and watch the fish swim by. She was about to shake her head no and stay where she was when she saw one of those flashes of despair pass through his eyes and changed her mind. She turned so she was almost leaning against him, her body held rather stiffly as she watched the window, and he, with caution as if he expected her to push him away, wrapped one arm around her. Another school of small fish passed by, then a single long, narrow fish, and bit by bit she let herself return to sagging against that soft shirt. She looked down at the arm around her and laid her palm over the exposed Mark. He flinched but when she didn’t say anything he tightened that arm around her. She could feel his chest rise and fall as he inhaled; eventually, she slipped down so her head was pressed against him so she could hear the beating of his heart. The sound lulled her and, already tired, she could feel herself struggling to stay awake. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep in Draco Malfoy’s arms, she thought as her eyes kept trying to close. It would give him the wrong idea. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.

**_#_ **

Draco leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes and just sat in the window seat and felt Hermione Granger slowly relax against him until she was on the verge of sleep. He couldn’t imagine having willingly sacrificed his parents the way she had; as much as his own parents grated on him with their incessant, smothering concern he loved them with the same fierce love he knew they felt for him. What a horrible choice she’d had to make to keep them safe.

A choice that was his fault. His side’s fault. “Mea culpa,” he murmured. “Mea maxima culpa.”

He tightened the arm he had around her and she made a vague noise before shifting a little against his chest. Now he understood why she was here. No parents to go home to and she’d ended things with Ron Weasley so his house was out of the question. Potter, he supposed, was tucked into the bosom of the Weasleys with his diminutive girlfriend and best friend keeping him tied into that family.

Meanwhile, Hermione Granger was adrift in the world she’d saved and so stuck here rebuilding a library with an old enemy. He sighed and opened his eyes and looked down at the bushy-haired witch who was most definitely asleep by this point and sighed again. He was the least equipped person he knew to help anyone and he didn’t even think she wanted help, much less trusted him to offer it. And soon enough everyone would trickle back into Hogwarts and she’d return to her sunlit tower with its apparently ratty furniture and he’d be down here alone.

“Granger,” he shook her a little and she made a tiny noise and just burrowed into him. “Hermione,” he said, trying again. “I doubt you want to sleep on the window seat.”

She startled awake at that and sat up, pulling away from him. He couldn’t tell but he suspected she had turned bright red in the darkness “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’d carry you to your room but I’m not sure if the wards are still up so I’m afraid you’ll have to walk.”

“I’m sorry I got your nice shirt all wet,” she said around a yawn.

Encouraged, he reached a hand out to lace his fingers through hers. “It’s not that nice,” he said. “Just a t-shirt.”

“Feels nice,” she said and didn’t pull her hand away and didn’t stand up to walk away.

Draco smiled to himself in the darkness. “I’m glad my efforts didn’t go wholly unappreciated,” he said. “Even if you aren’t interested.”

“You know why,” she said.

“I think you are misreading who has the social standing these days,” he said. “It’s not only that people would want me to justify why I was sullying myself with you; more people would want you to explain why you’d waste your time on me.”

He could tell by the tiny sound she made and the way her fingers twitched in his that she’d never thought of it quite like that. If he were reading her quite right, a Draco Malfoy whom no one liked was far more appealing than the arrogant, popular rich boy he’d been. He wasn’t above using that. “Death Eater, remember?” he said very softly.

“Your House – “ she began but he cut her off.

“Will very likely pretend they don’t see me,” he said. “I was somewhat publicly on the losing side of this small war we just had and, thanks to the Mark on my arm, I can’t recant in a way anyone would believe. I’m poison.” The truth of that burned. “I will, Hermione, quietly likely be wholly friendless come September.”

“Your skinny friend?” she asked.

“Theodore?” He wondered if she really couldn’t quite remember Theo Nott’s name or if she had some grudge that made her not want to voice it. “We’ve been friends long enough he may… but I wouldn’t blame him if he cut ties. It would be the sensible thing to do, after all, if he wants a career after graduation.”

“You’ll have me,” she said.

“You’ll disappear up in Gryffindor,” he said hating the way he was almost begging for reassurance. So much, he thought, for trying to manipulate her.

She stood up and yawned again and he stood up as well, ready to escort her to the hall that led to her room. “I won’t,” she said. “I mean, I will to live of course, but we’ll….” She didn’t seem to know what she wanted to say or promise and stopped talking. He followed in silence her to that invisible but well-known line that no Slytherin boy crossed for fear of the warding. She stopped when he did and, in the darkness of the common room, Hermione Granger leaned over to him and brushed her lips over his cheek.

It was an utterly chaste kiss and yet Draco Malfoy stood in near shock as the witch who’d given it to him disappeared into the shadows. 

**#**

Hermione handed Draco the next cleaned Arithmancy book and he checked it for damage and sent it on its way. By unspoken agreement, they’d left efficient cleaning behind and just sat together after breakfast, not quite touching but not across the room from one another either. “Are you taking this?” he asked, waving the next book she’d passed him in the air.

“Arithmancy?” she asked. He nodded and she said, “N.E.W.T. level. I don’t know who else will be in the class, though. I don’t think it tends to get a lot of students.”

“I will,” Draco said. “Probably Theo. Maybe some Ravenclaws.” He confirmed the book in his hand was fine and sent it sailing away. “Do you want to plan a study group?”

“You and me?” Hermione had her head down over a book and her loose hair obscured whatever expression might reveal more than her neutral tone.

“And Theo,” Draco said.

“Assuming he’d be willing to sit down at a table with a Mudblood,” Hermione said as she shook the last of the broken bits of plaster from the book she was using to avoid looking at him.

“I don’t think you should call yourself that,” Draco said.

“Makes you uncomfortable?” she asked and now he could hear the knives in her voice.

“Yes.” He plucked the book from her hand. “I am well aware what an arse I was. You needn’t rub it in.” He flipped through the pages and now he was using the book to hold his eyes captive. “Theo has, indeed, been raised as a blood purist, but I think he would be grateful to have a study partner. It’s supposed to be a very difficult course.”

“Especially if that study partner is a war heroine?”

Draco glanced up. She was quite right, of course. Theo was pragmatic enough to know being seen with Hermione Granger would help whitewash his own status and he’d never been the kind of brutal idealist the Carrows had been. Prejudiced, yes, but not a zealot. Hermione had her eyes narrowed in a knowing glare and he touched her knee. “If you’d rather he weren’t there,” he said, “I would understand.”

She sighed and rubbed at her face. “No, it’s… this year is going to be hard, isn’t it?”

Draco lowered his head.

“I wasn’t here,” she went on, “we were out cold and hungry and angry and desperate but we weren’t  _ here _ . I’ve heard stories but… how bad was it, Draco?”

“It was bad,” he whispered, a year of nightmares in his voice. 

“Tell me.” Her words were implacable and he shuddered but tried to find a way to explain.

“The Carrows,” he began, “they were… they were crazy. I’m not being clever or hyperbolic. They were truly not well. The only thing that let anyone survive was that they weren’t bright either.” He could feel the tears beginning to burn behind his eyes. “Your friend Longbottom… he was incredible. He told them off, told them no, told them to burn in hell.”

“You didn’t.” The words weren’t even a question.

“You have to mean it.” He wasn’t sure she could hear him. “And I didn’t. None of us did. Who wants to hurt first years? They’re babies. Who could mean that?” The words were getting more choked. “But they made us do it and I didn’t… I wasn’t brave enough… we all learned to fake it. To say the words with no force and the victims learned to scream and wail even if it wasn’t bad but sometimes I was so scared it had more force and – “

He looked up at her and he knew the tears were running now and he wanted desperately to flee. “I tortured little kids, Hermione.” She held a hand he knew he didn’t deserve out to him and he let himself take it. His head was on her knee before he spoke again, his voice as controlled and as dead as he wished he were. “I told you I’ve realized – far too late - that there are things a man shouldn’t do even to survive.”

She didn’t let go of his hand. Didn’t hurl abuse at him. Didn’t do anything he expected or deserved.

All she said was, “I was right, then. It’s going to be a very difficult year.”

**#**

Hermione stood up and brushed imaginary dust off her trousers. Draco wondered if she realized she did that every time she transitioned from one place to another; it was a little tell he was coming to find enchanting. "Let's go," she said.

He looked at her standing over him then at the piles of Arithmancy books. "We have work," he said. The simple chore of sorting and cleaning books felt both impossible and inescapable. "We can't just skive off," he said, helpless and caught between the witch and the task in front of him.

"I am feeling overwhelmed," she said, sounding not overwhelmed at all. "I'm about to have a breakdown. You're going to walk me back to the dungeon and keep me company because you're worried." She held a hand down to him and, nonplussed, Draco took it and rose to his feet.

"That is not at all what's happening," he said to her. “That is near to the opposite of what’s happening.”

"You're calling me a liar?" she asked him. "Maybe I'm just very good at hiding my upset. Stiff upper lip and all."

Draco found himself tricked into another wan smile. "You're something else," he said.

She squeezed the hand she still held in his. "This is just what Gryffindors are like," she said. "Maybe you can do that thing where you coax the elves to bring us something."

They made their way toward the exit and as they walked to the Slytherin dormitories he asked her why the elves were so wary of her and got the full story of S.P.E.W.. He found himself laughing at the way she mocked her own early adolescent certainties even as he was impressed by the way she'd kept the core of her values despite admitting her first attempts at righting oppressive wrongs had been misguided. They did run into Headmistress McGonagall on their way downstairs and she frowned at Hermione, a frown, Draco thought, that was all too knowing, and warned Hermione against taking on too much. "You've been through quite a bit," the woman said. "Give yourself space to recover."

"Draco's helping me," Hermione said. 

Draco watched McGonagall's eyes widen just a tad at the way Hermione artlessly – or, perhaps, artfully - dropped his given name.

"I'm glad you two are getting on," was all the older woman said, however. "I've always thought you had a number of scholastic interests in common and it was unfortunate that things kept you from exploring those together."

"We're planning to set up a study group for N.E.W.T. Arithmancy," Hermione said. "And maybe a recovery group."

McGonagall nodded. "Miss Abbott is returning this fall and she wrote with a similar suggestion. I suggest you owl her."

"I'll do that," Hermione said.

Only after they'd reached the safety of the dungeon and Draco had found an elf eager to bring them sandwiches and lemonade did he turn to Hermione, his hand wrapped around his lunch, and ask, "Recovery group?"

She didn't answer at first. She took a long drink of the lemonade Draco found too sweet and then a bite of her sandwich. He watched her chew and swallow and considered that one, perhaps, shouldn't stare at a woman's mouth this avidly, this hungrily, but that bit of consideration was mostly subsumed by his nerves. A recovery group. What did she mean by that?

"It's been bad for everyone," she said at last. "Are we supposed to sit in classes and pretend none of it happened?"

"The Ministry might prefer that," Draco said.

"Arseholes," Granger said before she took another bite of her sandwich.

"Arseholes with power," Draco said.

Hermione set her sandwich down and looked at him. She was seated on the floor with her back against one of the leather couches and, seated across from her, he was trapped again by those wide, dark eyes. "I've spent the last few years learning that people with power tend to care more about protecting that power than anything else," she said. "I'm no longer especially deferential."

"I don't want to sit around in some group and talk about my feelings." Draco dredged his most arrogant sneer up, a remnant of a more innocent time, and put it on hoping she wouldn't see through it.

"It wouldn't be an abuse the Slytherins group," she said, reaching her hand out to rest on his extended ankle.

Another hope dashed, Draco thought.

"That's not what it would be like," she said.

He shook his head. "That's  _ exactly _ what it would be like," he said.

He wasn't sure what he expected her to do. Argue her point, perhaps, or scoff at his fears. He didn't expect her to pull herself forward so she was kneeling next to him. Didn't expect her to put her hands on each side of his face and murmur, "Trust me, Draco." Didn't expect her to press her lips, sweetened by lemonade, to his.

He let himself note the gentle, cautious nature of the kiss before he pulled away. "I thought you didn't want that," he said. "Too much staring at the condescending pureblood and his so very fortunate pity date."

Her hands were still on his cheeks and though she flushed at his jibe she didn't remove them. "Or the condescending war heroine and her walk on the wild side," she suggested. "It will be awful."

"It will be the only good thing in a sea of awful," he corrected her. He went to put his hands along her back and was startled to discover he still had his lunch in them. He set it down and, with a tentative and uncomfortable attempt at a smirk, used his freed hands to tug the witch onto his lap. She didn’t resist but settled herself and tipped her head back so her cheek was resting on his shoulder.

“You have the nicest shirts,” she said as she rubbed her cheek against the fabric.

“I tortured children,” he said. 

“I know.” She sounded sad and angry and like she might even understand in the tiniest of ways what that year had been like, what fear and desperation felt like as they crept into your bones, what the eyes of children looked like when they were relieved to pair up with you because you weren’t Greg or Vince and what you did to them might hurt but it didn’t feel like fire flaying your flesh from your bones even as it left no mark. That look of relief haunted him.

He sat, leaning up against the couch in the room where he’d made his home for seven years with Hermione Granger on his lap trying to think of anything other than the expressions on the faces of children at the other end of his wand. Hermione shifted and he noted her hair smelled of rosemary. He would have expected something floral rather than the sharp, piney herb; another way she surprised him, distracted him. “I like your hair,” he said. “I mean, the smell. Your shampoo.”

“My great big, bushy head?” she asked him and he made a strangled half growl and she took one of his hands in hers. “It’s rosemary.”

“I know,” he said in as light a tone as he could muster. “I’m fairly decent at Potions, you might recall. Knowledge of herbs comes in handy when you’re bent over a cauldron.”

“It’s for remembrance.”

His fingers clenched tightly around hers. He knew that. “I wish I could forget,” he said, voice still as light as he could manage. “I would die to forget.”

“Also,” she continued, “I like the smell.” She squeezed his hand back. “And you’ll never forget. At least, having been on the other side of the torturer’s wand I know that I can’t. I think it will be the same for you. And I would prefer you to live if you don’t mind too terribly.”

“What do I do?” he whispered. “What would have made it better for you? What would make it better for you now?”

She reached her free hand up to his face and turned it so he was looking down at her as she rested against him. “You aren’t your aunt,” she said. “You didn’t mean it. Even when you were afraid you didn’t really mean it.”

“I still hurt them,” he said. 

“Amends, then,” she said. “You figure out what needs doing and you do it.”

“I don’t know how,” he said.

“I’ll help,” she said, and then she guided his head back to hers and he brushed his lips across hers, then his nose against hers then dropped a line of kisses along the edge of her jaw.

“People will hate you,” he said. “They’ll call you names. They’ll think I’ve Imperiused you.” He watched her close her eyes and take a deep breath. “And those are the people on your side. The ones on mine – “

“They’ll sneer,” she said. “And call me other names, though probably behind my back and not to my face.”

“Not to mine either,” he said. “At least not more than once. It will, as you mentioned, be awful.”

She set a kiss at the very edge of his mouth and he parted his lips just a little and she sucked on his lower lip before opening her own mouth and letting him taste that lemonade again. When they broke apart she said, a little breathlessly, “It will be the only good thing in a sea of awful,” and he was tricked into another smile.

#

Draco hesitated at the entrance to the common room then pushed open the door and waited for Hermione to pass through it. Once in the hall he took her hand and braced himself against imagined stares and catcalls as they headed to dinner. An afternoon of kissing had passed more quickly than time spent sorting books and he felt like they’d been in a lull, a precious lull, certainly, but one sure to end.

It wasn’t the staff in the dining room who would end it, however. If they noted the pair holding hands at all it was with tired indifference. Everyone staying at the castle spent their days struggling to rebuild a school in too little time and the relationship of the two not-quite-students wasn’t interesting enough to elicit comment. Even McGonagall merely blinked and then poured herself another glass of wine before returning to her discussion with Flitwick on the remaining fall staffing issues.

Draco and Hermione ate the day’s offering and cleared their plate and were discussing whether it was a good night for stargazing when they entered the Slytherin common room to find a lanky boy sitting on one of the couches with his feet up on an ottoman he’d dragged over from a corner.

Draco dropped Hermione’s hand out of shock at seeing anyone in what he’d come to think of as their space, a move she clearly misinterpreted because she looked from the boy on the couch to him and back again and then said, “I think I’ll go read.”

“Granger,” the boy said with a polite nod. “The headmistress said you were staying here as well.”

“She didn’t mention you were coming, Nott,” Draco said. If Draco had had a tail it would have been fluffed. If he had had feathers they would have been ruffled. As it was, lacking either of those things, his posturing was far more subtle but still unmistakable, at least to Theodore.

“No?” Theodore Nott painted a look of polite surprise on his face.

“Why are you here?” Draco asked, dropping onto the facing couch even as Hermione excused herself and walked down the hall to her room. 

Theodore Nott watched her leave, his eyes on her until she disappeared into her room; Draco noted that the other Slytherin had positioned himself perfectly to watch the girls’ corridor. “Nott Manor is too big and too empty,” Theodore said once he heard the quiet click of Hermione Grangers’s door closing. “I was beginning to lose my mind.”

Draco nodded. The gesture was stiff because he was angry but he made it because he understood. 

“I didn’t expect to see that.” Theodore nodded his head toward where Hermione had been. “Slumming?”

“Shut up, arsehole,” Draco said, his hands curling into impotent fists. They both knew he’d never hit Theodore. Still, the vehemence of his response made Theodore’s lips curve up in a small smile. “I mean it,” Draco muttered at the sight of that grin.

Theodore held his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender before asking, “Is that something you plan to continue with once the proper school year starts?”

“If she’ll let me,” Draco said. “She seems to think I won’t have the nerve to face down the social opposition.”

“Smart girl,” Theodore said.

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t make offers you have no intention of following up on,” Theodore said, “I am well aware you like girls. It’s one of the great tragedies of my life.” He smirked. “That, along with the dearth of other options here at heterosexual Hogwarts, restricts me to the life of celibacy that, alas, I know so well.”

“You are no more interested in me than you are in her,” Draco snorted. “I think you once said if I were the last man on earth you’d reconsider women.”

“You are somewhat prone to dramatics,” Theo said. “And too thin.”

“You’ve heard the truism of the pot and the kettle I assume,” Draco said

Theo leaned forward and said, “I’ve missed you, you pale arsehole. You okay?”

Draco slouched in his seat and shrugged. “I’m here sorting books rather than letting my mother follow me from room to room and ask if I’ve got ague or scurvy or whatever she’d dredged up to explain why I might be less than perky instead of the actual cause of alternating rage and depression. So I’m ducky.” He flicked his eyes toward Hermione’s door. “Or I was.”

Theodore shrugged. “I’ll apologize to her. You’ll snog her in front of me and I won’t gasp in horror that you’re sullying yourself with a woman. It’ll be fine.”

“How about you?”

Theodore shrugged again but said, “I brought whiskey. Want some?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Many people beta read different sections of this fic, and to them, I own an endless debt of gratitude. I'll add names as I get to the chapters they worked on.


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